I always explained that I had no influence on these matters, but they invariably told me in great detail what they'd done and why they deserved a prize. In some cases, they were correct. They deserved a prize all right, but not a Nobel Prize. And so, with the help of some friends and colleagues, I started the annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony.
The first was held in October 1991. Now each year the science humor magazine I currently edit, Annals of Improbable Research, awards ten Ig Nobel Prizes to people whose achievements, though not precisely ignoble, "cannot or should not be reproduced." Genuine Nobel Prize winners present the Ig Nobel Prizes to the winners at Harvard. A friendly, standing-room-only audience of 1,200 gives a warm welcome with wild applause and paper airplanes.
Here are a few especially memorable Ig Nobel Prize winners:
In Computer Science Chris Niswander of Tucson, Ariz., was honored in 2002 for inventing PawSense, software that detects when a cat is walking across your computer keyboard. "Cats can enter random commands and data, damage your files and even crash your computer," explained Niswander, a computer scientist. When PawSense detects a cat on the keyboard, it emits a blast of loud harmonica music, or a recording of someone hissing.
The inventor says that in addition to the sounds, once a cat has been recognized, PawSense blacks the cat's keyboard input. It puts up a giant message on the computer screen: "Catlike typing Detected." To unlock the screen, the program requests that you type the word human. A cat might beat the system through a lucky combination of paw blows, but its odds of doing so are low.
In Environmental protection When businessmen come home to their wives after a hard night of drinking and smoking for professional purposes, they can, though no fault of their own, smell bad. Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company in Seoul, South Korea, was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 2003 for inventing the self-perfuming business suit. The fabric is soaked in micro-encapsulated peppermint scent; even a slight motion releases the flagrance.
Kwon traveled from Seoul at his company's expense to attend the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. The Kolon
Company generously made serf-perfuming business suits for the five Nobel laureates who participated in the event, as well as for the master of ceremonies.
Which of the following is NOT a mason that the author started the Ig Nobel Prize?
A. Many people asked him for help to win a Nobel Prize.
B. Some of the achievements did deserve a prize.
C. He is an editor of a science humor magazine.
D. He wanted to make up for what the Nobel Prize failed to do.
For the writer, the most difficult thing is to ______.
A. be sure that his future can be positive too.
B. be sure that he is a perfect person.
C. be sure that he can play baseball just like everybody else.
D. adjust himself to the reality.
Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D . Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.
There is one kind of pain for which nobody has yet found a cure--the pain that comes from the ending of a relationship. The relationship could be a marriage or a deep friendship. Such a relationship may come to a sudden end; or it may simply fade away slowly as people and circumstances change. You may be the one to "break it off', with a short note or a brief phone call. Or you may be on the receiving end. However it ended and whoever decided to end it, the pain is equally hard to bear and it requires the same time for grief. Although there is no cure for grief, we can not help looking for one, to ease the pain and to make us forget our tears. We keep ourselves busy with work, or we try to plunge ourselves into our hobbies. Perhaps we start to drink more than we should to "drown our sorrows", or we follow the conventional advice and join a club or society. But these things cannot cure it.
Moreover, we are always in a hurry to get rid of our grief. We feel that we should try to convince ourselves, as we bite on the pillow, that we are much too old to be crying. Some people bury their grief deep inside themselves. Others seek relief by pouring their hearts out to their friends, or to anyone else who can offer a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. It is not easy to explain why we adopt these attitudes to emotional pain. Part of the answer must lie in the nature of grief itself. The important thing to admit about grief, then, is that it will take its time. By trying to convince ourselves that it ought to be over sooner, we create an additional tension which can only make things worse.
How much time is needed will vary from person to person, but psychiatrists have a rule of thumb: grief will last as long as the original relationship lasted. The sad thing is that, when the breakdown occurs, we can only stumble forward over the stones beneath our feet. It is dark ahead, and we will fall painfully many times before we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The passage is mainly about
A. how to erase the emotional pain
B. what is the emotional pain like
C. what cause the emotional pain
D. why to erase the emotional pain